13 Jan 2010

baking bread

It was a hot day last Friday. I checked on iGoogle, and it said Melbourne was 34 degrees Celsius. As I am a person who hates the heat, I don't dare bake anything on hot days, as the oven makes the house more hotter. Friday was an exception. I wanted to bake bread and use the heat to make the dough rise.

I flicked through "Reader's Digest Bake with Love", a thick recipe book I received from Eira last year for my 16th birthday. I bookmarked about 15 recipes, but I never made anything from it until Friday because everything seemed so hard. That Friday I was determined to bake a loaf of bread and I did.

I halved the recipe because this was my first time baking bread and luckily I did because it turned out to be very big! I don't want to imagine how much bread I'll have if i didn't.

Turns out baking bread wasn't so hard. It just takes a long time for the dough to rise. The bread turned out a bit dry and hard because I probably over kneaded it because I forgot to add an ingredient (how shameful!) and slightly over baked it. But it's still edible and I like it toasted with jam or cream cheese.

I'm going to attempt bake another type of bread from the same recipe book and hopefully it's softer that this one.